


Waltz on a Battlefield

by ljs



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen, Regency
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-22
Updated: 2012-08-22
Packaged: 2017-11-12 16:24:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,230
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/493261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ljs/pseuds/ljs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A vignette set at a Society party, wherein Anthea sees as much as her betrothed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Waltz on a Battlefield

Silk and satin, plumes and silver buckles, hands and feet and smiles – all sparkled under the light of a hundred candles, as the last figures of a country dance unwound. 

“Miss Matheson, I see that your betrothed has not yet arrived,” said Lady Bathurst. “May I present Captain John Watson, late of the Royal Fusilliers?”

Miss Anthea Caroline Matheson in fact was watching for someone else to enter the ballroom, but the name of the neat, soldierly gentleman standing in front of her caught her attention. She smiled blandly at her hostess before dropping a perfectly judged curtsy to the gentleman. “Thank you, my lady. Good evening, Captain Watson.”

Lady Bathurst glided away, and the gentleman smiled in what she had no doubt would charm any other lady at this event. Her interest and affections being fixed elsewhere, her heart remained unmoved. Her mind, on the other hand: “Sir, I suppose that you're newly come to London?”

“Why, yes. Yes I am. Is there something about my appearance that gives me away?” he said jokingly, looking down at his neat and unexceptionable evening clothes. “Been in regimentals so long that sometimes I worry.”

“No, sir, you seem well turned out. It's just....” 

She trailed off as a commotion arose at the top of the grand staircase. A lean man, attired dramatically in stark black to match his Byronic curls, was expostulating with a footman: this was for show, she perceived, while the Byronic gentleman surveyed the ballroom. “It's just,” Anthea began again with a smile, “that Mr Sherlock Holmes, with whom you share your lodgings, has arrived, one suspects without an invitation. I do think he might be looking for you.” 

“How did you – I mean, we've just been – oh God.” This last exclamation Captain Watson uttered upon turning around and viewing for himself his friend ruthlessly leaping past the quite inadequate guard and making for a knot of people on the other side of the ballroom. “If you'll excuse me,” he said, and plunged into the swirl of released dancers.

“And if you will excuse me, my dear,” said a smooth voice in her ear. She felt a warm, solid male body move behind her and around, as if the owner of the voice had entered through the French window at her back. “All apologies for being so late. Pressures at work, you know.”

Anthea had carefully chosen her station for just such a tardy arrival. Her smile up at this gentleman was anything but bland. “My dear Mycroft, I expected nothing less.”

“You know me too well,” Mr Mycroft Holmes said, and offered his arm as the orchestra struck up again. “This is my dance, I believe. You may expound on my failings while we waltz.”

“As if I should so waste my breath,” Anthea replied, and took his arm.

To her admittedly biased gaze, the senior of the Holmes brothers was every bit as elegant as the arbiter of all things tonnish Mr Brummell. His clothing was perfectly cut, his auburn hair neatly arranged save for the one irrepressible curl in the middle of his forehead, but he called no attention to himself. This could be attributed to his acknowledged minor post in the War Office (despite his wealthy and well-connected family); Anthea, however, knew that he had quite another reason for sliding so unobtrusively through the world.

The delicious thing about her Mycroft was that he allowed her to share that reason, just as he shared his heart.

With a smile, he brought them into the proper pose for the dance – his arm around her waist, his other hand clasping hers. She stepped just a little too close for propriety, which elicited an amused, mischievous look of reproof from him, and she whispered, “Did you see that your brother has arrived?”

“Alas, yes,” he said, even as he swung them into the first turn of the waltz. “He is on the trail of a villainous hackney driver. How he thinks to find out such a man here is his own delusionary business.”

“Was it Sherlock, then, who posted the Bow Street Runner in amongst Lady Bathurst's footmen?”

“Anthea, you are too clever. You saw Mr Lestrade, did you?” 

“Yes, of course.” She laughed up at him. “And I saw someone else, darling Mycroft, gaining entrance to this exclusive affair.”

Without losing a beat or missing a turn, he changed from gentleman to hunter. “The Chevalier Gascoigne?”

Who, they both knew, was not an aristocratic emigre, although he was indeed a French enemy; she had been tasked a fortnight ago with keeping abreast of the false Chevalier's movements, seeing as she spent more time in society than did Mycroft. “He arrived a quarter-hour before you did, and then disappeared in the general direction of the library with Lord Bathurst. Where, I believe you said yesterday, there might be some plans for a forthcoming intelligence operation?”

A look of exquisite exasperation crossed Mycroft's face. “That is truly unfortunate.”

“And requires, I presume, the swift attention of a wiser man than our host.” Her smile was as good as a kiss. “You may exit the dance at the next turn, my darling Mr Holmes, and attend to the affairs of state.”

“Regretfully, yes,” he said, and twirled them both, and then navigated them out of the flow of dancers. They came to rest just by a doorway, in a shadowy place where candlelight didn't reach.

“I must go, but – shall it be Hatchard's tomorrow, or the Park?” he said, drawing her closer than was proper – while not close enough for what she longed for.

She knew the rules, however, and how they might break them. “Come to tea, darling. I will arrange for Mama to be indisposed.”

Eyes gleaming, he smiled, and raised her hand to his lips. “A better idea indeed. I look forward, my dear,” he murmured, “to our... conversation.”

As she knew, he used the word intentionally, and she laughed as he disappeared into the dark corridor.

Thinking then of the nation's good, thinking more of the secret pleasures she and Mycroft enjoyed and the wedding date fast approaching, she walked the length of the ballroom toward the grand staircase and the slight altercation occurring there, as that Byronic gentleman vociferously protested the attempts of several footmen to push him out. This was, of course, play-acting of the highest order, as she noted that it was the Runner Lestrade who had firm hold of Mr Sherlock Holmes's arm. A trap, she supposed. She was not particularly interested –

“Er, hullo,” said Captain Watson, who stood at the foot of the staircase. “Miss Anthea Matheson? We were just introduced earlier.”

“Oh!” she said. “So we were.”

From his stance several steps above them, Mr Sherlock Holmes snapped, “Watson, are you coming?”

“Right,” sighed Captain Watson, and with a shake of his head and a modest bow, he followed the younger Holmes's (and Lestrade's) tempestuous departure.

Anthea turned to survey the ballroom. Silk and satin, plumes and silver buckles, hands and feet and smiles – all sparkled under the light of a hundred candles, as the first figures of a country dance began. But her eyes were keen, her mind more active than the bodies of the dancers.

As her betrothed often said, when one walked with a Holmes, one saw the battlefield. She would have it no other way.


End file.
